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ISBN:
9780195173833
Publication Date:
August 2008
Page Count:
256
Was € now € 8.00
Book Description:
In January 1959, as Fidel Castro entered Havana in triumph, Americans
hailed the revolutionary as a hero. Then came Castro's increasingly
anti-American talk, the rise in his regime of the openly Marxist Ché
Guevara and Raúl Castro, and seizures of American-owned assets. In
little more than a year, President Dwight D. Eisenhower concluded that
Castro must go.
In The Bay of Pigs, Howard Jones
provides a concise, incisive, and dramatic account of the disastrous
attempt to overthrow Castro. He deftly examines the train of missteps
and self-deceptions that led to the invasion of U. S.-trained exiles at
the Bay of Pigs. Ignoring warnings from the ambassador to Cuba, the
Eisenhower administration put in motion an operation that proved nearly
unstoppable even after the inauguration of John F. Kennedy. The CIA and
Pentagon, meanwhile, both voiced confidence in the outcome of the
invasion, especially after coordinating previous successful coups in
Guatemala and Iran. As a vital part of the Cuban effort, the CIA sought
to incite a popular insurrection by recruiting the Mafia's help in
engineering Castro's assassination on the eve of the invasion. And so
the Kennedy administration launched the exile force toward its doom in
Cochinos Bay on April 17, 1961.
Jones gives a riveting account of the
battle--and the confusion in the White House--before moving on to
explore its implications. The Bay of Pigs, he writes, set the course of
Kennedy's foreign policy. It was a humiliation for the administration
that fueled fears of Communist domination and pushed Kennedy toward a
hardline cold warrior stance. But at the same time, the failed attack
left him deeply skeptical of CIA and military advisers and influenced
his later actions during the Cuban missile crisis.
Richly
researched, vividly written, The Bay of Pigs offers an engaging
and thoughtful account of the turning point in Kennedy's foreign policy
and indeed in foreign policy for decades to come.